Resistance

A neutral-sounding word used to rebrand attacks on civilians as legitimate struggle. When Hamas’s October 7 massacre of 1,200 people, or a suicide bombing on a bus, is called “resistance,” the word is laundering terrorism into heroism. Resistance to occupation is a real and lawful idea; deliberately murdering civilians is a war crime under any law and by any people, and renaming it changes nothing. An EU-funded study found Palestinian textbooks recasting terror attacks as self-sacrificing “resistance.”